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indianexpress:  THE Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), on Tuesday, sought a ban on American author James Laine’s controversial book Shivaji: A Hindu King in Islamic India. This follows the High Court order nullifying the Maharashtra government-imposed ban on the book. An announcement seeking the ban was announced at a press conference by BORI regulatory body chairman Vijay Bhatkar and honorary secretary Mohan Dhadphale.

On January 5, 2004, BORI was attacked by a150-strong mob protesting against the institute’s alleged involvement in maligning Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj by helping Laine. The mob ransacked the library, destroyed thousands of rare books, ancient manuscripts, old photographs and priceless artefacts, and took away some invaluable historical texts.

“Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is a respected figure not only in Maharashtra, but in the entire country. This book is a distortion of history and derogatory to Maharashtra,” said Bhatkar, adding that BORI would offer all necessary support to the government and take all legal measures to ensure the book is banned.

Referring to a Supreme Court decision on May 6 supporting the ban by the Karnataka government on author PV Narayan’s book on Karnataka saint Basaveshwar, Bhatkar said similar grounds could be used for banning Laine’s book. The SC had ruled that if a book was likely to incite disharmony and enmity between groups then it could be banned.

Dhadphale stressed that the demand for the ban had nothing to do with the protests by saffron organisations like Sambhaji Brigade. This has been BORI’s stand since the book was published by the Oxford University Press in June 2003, he said.

“The institute’s trustee MG Dhavalikar had brought the draft of the book to the notice of the executive body meeting, and a resolution had been passed on December 4, 2003 registering a protest against the book and demanding its ban. This was one month before the attacks on BORI by the Sambhaji Brigade,” pointed out Dhadphale.

Similar decisions had also been made by the newly formed executive body on December 5, 2005 and even after that. “At a meeting conducted on Tuesday, it was unanimously decided to insist on the ban. This has been our consistent stand,” said Bhatkar.

indianexpress: TRAFFIC came to a standstill for almost four hours on Fergusson College Road when a fifty-year-old peepal tree in Tukaram Paduka Chowk got uprooted at about 4:30 pm on Tuesday blocking the flow of traffic on either sides.

According to the traffic police, normal flow of traffic was disrupted leading to congestion on FC Road.

The work of clearing the branches took about 4 hours which continued well into the night. The flow resumed at about 8: 30 in the evening, traffic police said. The Fire Brigade rushed their rescue van to the spot following the incident.

The incident left six two-wheelers including an Innova car and a Honda Activa damaged. Also one person was reported to be injured in the incident. The person’s identity could not be ascertained till late evening.

Deputy Fire Officer Suresh Sagvekar who was among the first to reach the spot said, “It was a huge tree and was totally uprooted. It threw traffic out of gear and blocked the entire road. The work of clearing off the remaining branches is still on and will take a couple of hours more. Traffic jam resulted from Fergusson College Road extended to Ghole Road and upto Jhansi Rani chowk and had to be diverted from the Ghole Road ward office.”

indianexpress:  IN an effort to expedite repair and maintainance work of road and water at ward level, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has now decentralised the administrative system. Henceforth, maintainance work of roads and water upto Rs 10 lakh will be approved and executed at ward level itself.

By granting more powers to ward officers, chairperson of zonal level committee and zonal commissioners and appointing civic officials, the civic administration hopes to reduce work load from the head of department and hurry the implementation of ward level development works.
 
Municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi has increased the financial powers of the ward officer from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh, chairperson of zonal level committee from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh and zonal commissioner from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. “For works upto Rs 10 lakh, officials at the ward office will not need approval of standing committee or the general body. They can directly approve the tenders and execute the work,” he said.

To ensure there is no corruption in direct approval of tenders, the civic administration has laid a condition that these works of maintainance and repairs should be budgeted. No new developmental work can be undertaken at ward level. Additional municipal commissioners have been given powers to verify and inspect these works.

Pardeshi has also appointed junior engineers for water and road works at every ward level and assistant engineers at zonal commissioner office for co-ordination of work between the ward and zonal offices.

indianexpress: IN a bid to avoid roads becoming the most criticised issue once monsoon sets in over the city, the Pune Municipal Corporation has set up a technical advisory committee to keep tab of the quality of road work and to advice the civic administration on road maintenance. The standing committee comprising nine officials - civic officials and retired bureaucrats - was formed on Tuesday and will begin its meetings from next week. The first report of the committee will be submitted within a month.

Municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi said it had become necessary to seek expert opinion, considering the frequency with which road conditions turned bad during monsoons. “The civic administration does not have expertise about roads. This committee will help us evaluate road-related issues like road construction, design, maintenance and specifications for quality roads,” he said.
 
The committee chaired by retired principal secretary MV Patil will comprise deputy director, CIRT Sunil Bose, head, civil engineering department D Y Patil college, R K Jain, retired chief engineer, PWD G B Jadhav and lecturer, COEP, RP Thanedar.

The committee which will meet once every three months will help the civic administration in drafting conditions and guidelines of contract/ tenders. “They will guide us on amendments in the contract by introducing clauses such as increasing the defect liability period and keeping part of the deposit during the defect liability period,” he said.

To avoid incidents of one contractor taking a number of road work and being unable to complete them, the civic administration will also prepare a data base of contractors. This data will include information of contractors working for PMC and the number of road works undertaken by them. “If we find that the contractor’s quota is full and he cannot take work beyond capacity, then his bids will not be opened and he cannot quote for the contract,” Pardeshi said.
 

indianexpress: THE crime branch of the city police has recovered stolen booty estimated over Rs 7.71 lakh from eleven people belonging to dreaded dacoit Jalinder Singh Kalyani gang on Tuesday. All the eleven have been booked under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) by the crime branch on Saturday.

According to crime branch officials, the recovery is a part of gold ornaments worth Rs 30.58 lakh stolen from residence of Yerawada based jeweller Arvind Ramlal Kothari (34) on July 8 last year by the gang. The recovery was made after sustained interrogation of the accused, the investigation officers, crime branch officials said.
 
The crime branch had booked eleven members of the Kalyani gang under MCOCA on Saturday following the approval given by additional commissioner of police Rajendra Singh.

They have been identified as Jullusingh Dudhani (21) of Khopoli-phata, Raigad, Pankajsingh Dudhani (25) of Ambernath, Ubed Khan (22) of Shindevasti, Hadapsar, Lalsingh Dagar (22) of Thane, Sachin Gore (20) of Saket Park, Hadapsar, Ganesh Pawale (19) of Ramtekdi, Makkhansingh Kalyani (25) of Ramtekdi, Manvaram Prajapati (25) and Veermaram Prajapati (19), both residents of Hadapsar besides Jalinder Singh (32) and Deepak Singh Hari Singh Tak (32) of Ramtekdi, Hadapsar.

indianexpress: SAJAG Nagrik Manch’s activist Jugal Rathi has written to the State Information Commissioner alleging delay in getting information from the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Transport authorities — PMT and PCMT — sought under threat to life provisions in the Right to Information (RTI) act.

According to the letter sent to Commissioner, Rathi said he had sought information regarding bus shelters under section 7 (1) of the RTI act, which covers ‘threat to life’. According to the provisions in the act, Rathi was to get a reply within 48 hours.

However, PCMT gave him answers on May 7. “The answers provided were partial as information of plans and target dates of completion of bus shades on bus stops was not provided,” the letter said. PMT failed to provide any information. Instead, they wrote a letter to Rathi saying it would take them two months to collect the information.

Rathi said the lives of thousands of PMT and PCMT commuters were put at risk, due to possibility of sunstroke. The PCMT said they had 134 stops of which 81 are missing. They have asked for 44 more stops. As for the PMT, they have 1,800 stops of which 600-odd don’t have shades. Rathi said they had promised to complete a survey in 25 days and that steps would be taken in two months.

techtree: In response to the growing demand for companion PCs, Samsung has announced its next-generation Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), the “Q1 Ultra,” offering the power of a desktop or notebook PC - anytime and anywhere.

The “Q1 Ultra” features an integrated split-Qwerty keypad, mouse, and user-defined function keys. Weighing in at just 1.5 pounds, it comes with an increased battery life of 4.5 hours. The new UMPC is designed for greater productivity, portability, and ease-of-use in a range of scenarios, the company said.

Christopher Franey, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Samsung Electronics America, said, “In creating the ‘Q1 Ultra’ UMPC, Samsung has relied on consumer insights, coupled with key technological advances to deliver a higher-performance solution packaged in an even more portable form factor that will appeal to a broader range of personal and professional users.”

The “Q1 Ultra” features the new Intel Ultra Mobile Processor running at clock speeds of 600 to 800 MHz, along with 1 GB of high speed DDR2 system memory.

“Q1 Ultra” includes a 7-inch wide WSVGA LCD touch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution, a 300 pixel Web cam, along with a high-performance dual-array microphone, and a high-resolution 1.3 mega pixel camera supporting video recording and still pictures.

Connectivity options include: integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, etc. The “Q1 Ultra” is compatible with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows XP Tablet Edition operating systems.

The UMPC integrates the AVS Now Instant-On feature for users to enjoy a host of multimedia applications, including videos, movies, music, etc, without booting up into Windows.

For system and data security, the UMPC comes with an integrated fingerprint reader.

techtree: Reportedly, Sun Microsystems will today unveil new Java software targeted at developers of mobile devices such as smart phones.

The new software called “JavaFX Mobile” is actually a programming language developed by Sun way back in 1995, carrying the promise, “write once, run anywhere” so that programmers are able to create applications to run on many different PCs.

According to the company, its new “JavaFX Mobile” software will enable carriers and device manufacturers to develop even better applications, with more integration of the Internet and other PC functions for mobile phones.

Rich Green, Executive Vice President, Software, Sun, said that up until a few years back, there were a very small percentage of devices that allowed users to surf the Web, exchange e-mails, read documents, take digital photos, and play music and video. But it’s not the same now. The entire network is getting into the hands of the user.

Sun said the new software will be a blend of the existing mobile handset version of Java, and technology from SavaJe Technologies, a Massachusetts-based software developer that Sun acquired only this year.

The software will be offered under an open-source license, allowing developers use and modify it for free, Sun said.

There are also plans to develop future versions of the software for makers of television set-top boxes, navigation devices, and automobile dashboards.

techtree: Sophos researchers warn of a new worm named ‘SillyFD-AA’ that is targeting removable drives.

In both its mode of infection and lack of profit motive, ‘SillyFD-AA’ harks back to the days when viruses were written for kicks rather than money…

‘SillyFD-AA’ singles out removable drives including USB memory sticks and floppy disks to create hidden files called ‘autorun.inf,’ that ensure a copy of the worm runs the next time these devices are plugged into computers running Windows.

And, the worm changes the title of Internet Explorer Windows to announce to the world that the computer has indeed been ‘hacked by 1BYTE’.

Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley, said that while the worm hasn’t been widely distributed yet, they are issuing warnings because of the potential danger presented by it.

He said it would be easy to add to this worm, the ability to transmit through other routes such as e-mail and instant messaging.

Cluley remarked that it is interesting to see hackers using different techniques in their attempt to break into peoples’ computers. This type of attack is perhaps understandable as so many businesses these days have e-mail gateway protection in place… which means, they can scan files coming into their company via e-mail attachments, but not files coming in attached to keychains in peoples’ pockets.

bbc: A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices.
The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project aims to create the open source platform for initial release in October 2007.

The operating system will be developed by members of the Ubuntu community, along with staff from chip giant Intel.

Its development was prompted by the growth of power hungry portable devices that place new demands on software.

“It is clear that new types of device - small, handheld, graphical tablets which are Internet-enabled - are going to change the way we communicate and collaborate,” said Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman.

“These devices place new demands on open-source software and require innovative graphical interfaces, improved power management and better responsiveness.”

Mobile firms such as Nokia are already using open source technologies in some of its products.